Sleeping Baby, the mural at east London’s Homerton hospital by street artist Stik.
Photograph: Anna Gordon/Commissioned for The Guardian

Stik, the once-homeless street artist whose large stick-figure murals pepper London, has unveiled his latest work, one that has raised £50,000 for the building it’s painted on – Homerton hospital in Hackney.

Sleeping Baby now adorns the outside of the hospital, and 100 silkscreen prints of the image, retailing at £500 each, have raised money for the Regional Neurological Rehabilitation Unit which works with Alzheimer’s sufferers and those with serious brain injuries. “They’re given this chance to recontact those parts of their mind which were lost, and regain a kind of inner life,” Stik says of the unit’s patients, who take art classes as part of their therapy. “Otherwise they would be just sitting in a bed somewhere, waiting for their brain to heal: this is an active healing process.”

Stik says the image – painted in his usual style of thick black lines and block colour – represents the NHS itself: “The NHS is our baby. It is very vulnerable, and we the people need to take care of it. We’ve created it, by the people for the people. We can’t let it be cut up and sold off, that would be barbaric. Privatising the NHS is an abominable idea – suffering is not a commodity to be bought and sold.”

He visited the hospital himself regularly during a period when he was living rough in abandoned buildings. “You often come into unfortunate accidents when you’re homeless, so it was a very important place to me,” he says. “I’ve had my fair share of knocks and grazes; I’ve been in the A&E department a few times.” He also recently underwent a cancer screening at the hospital, from which he got the all-clear.

Privatising the NHS is an abominable idea – suffering is not a commodity to be bought and sold

Stik

His popularity is such that people arrived from all over Britain to queue up for the screenprints of Sleeping Baby, some of them camping overnight. Stik hailed them for their support. “Bear in mind this is an NHS department that’s dealt with MRSA, the Olympics and the riots – and even they were caught out by the response!” he laughs. “The people who queued through the night to buy the print, and the people who came down to support the event and volunteered to help, are all responding to something they believe in that I’ve just shone a light on. Our society is deeply worried about losing the NHS. People feel powerless about it, and I’ve had so many people thanking me for doing this project – but really I haven’t done anything. All I’ve done is painted a picture. As an artist I’m acting as a representative of my community, showing fondness and love for an institution we all need, and expressing its vulnerability – and strength also.”

Stik in his Hoxton studio. Photograph: Antonio Zazueta Olmos for the Guardian

He’s careful to assert that in raising money for the unit, he’s not suggesting it can sustain itself without state support. “This is not private funding – this is public money, from the public who chose to donate,” he says. “And I’m merely repaying what I’ve been given by society.” As well as Homerton hospital, he namechecks homeless charity St Mungo’s, whose hostel he stayed in round the corner on Mare Street, and Mind, the mental health charity he has been helped by, which has an office next to the hospital. “Through the help of these services, I was able to grow as a person and artist, and now through my art I’m no longer bound to expressing my own struggle – I’m expressing the struggle of marginalised communities, and groups like the NHS. I’m a child of the 80s, I was born under Thatcher, and I was led to believe that society does not exist. I reject that wholeheartedly – society does exist, and in reclaiming society we’re rediscovering it.”